Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Aeschylus. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Aeschylus
Aeschylus (UK: , US: ; Greek: Αἰσχύλος Aiskhylos, pronounced [ai̯s.kʰý.los]; c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek author of Greek tragedy, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academics' knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Before this, characters interacted only with the chorus.
Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived. There is a long-standing debate regarding the authorship of one of these plays, Prometheus Bound. Some believe that his son Euphorion wrote it. Fragments from other of Aeschylus' plays have survived in quotations, and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyrus. These fragments often give further insights into Aeschylus' work. He was probably the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy. His Oresteia is the only extant and ancient example.
At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is one of very few classical Greek tragedies concerned with contemporary events, and the only one extant. The significance of the war against Persia was so great to Aeschylus and the Greeks that Aeschylus' epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright. Despite this, Aeschylus's work – particularly the Oresteia – is generally acclaimed by modern critics and scholars.
If you will take me as your teacher, you will not kick against the pricks.
They sent forth men to battle, But no such men return; And home, to claim their welcome, Come ashes in an urn.
Those who would learn must suffer. In our own despair, against our will, wisdom comes to us.
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
Many among men are they who set high the show of honor, yet break justice.
But when the dust has drunk the blood of men, no resurrection comes for one who's dead.
For the marriage bed ordained by fate for men and women is stronger than an oath and guarded by Justice.
There is a time when fear is good and ought to remain seated as a guardian of the heart.
Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.
The people's awe and innate fear will hold injustice back by day, by night, so long as the people leave the laws intact, just as they are: muddy the cleanest spring, and all you'll have to drink is muddy water.
Fortune is for all, judgment is theirs who have won it for themselves.
To make wail and lament for one's ill fortune, when one will win a tear from the audience, is well worthwhile.
Human prosperity never rests but always craves more, till blown up with pride it totters and falls. From the opulent mansions pointed at by all passers-by none warns it away, none cries, 'Let no more riches enter!'.
A man dies not for the many wounds that pierce his breast, unless it be that life's end keep pace with death, nor by sitting on his hearth at home doth he the more escape his appointed doom.
But I will place this carefully fed pig Within the crackling oven; and, I pray, What nicer dish can e'er be given to man.
There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.
Longer Version:
There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart's controls. There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.
A people's wrath voiced abroad bringeth grave Danger, no less than public curse pronounced.
From him Death alone of all the powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof.
No bribes. Nothing that passes under the roof of a temple Or under the roof of the mouth, can appease heaven's anger Or deflect its aim.
The truth
has to be melted out of our stubborn lives
By suffering.
Nothing speaks the truth,
Nothing tells us how things really are,
Nothing forces us to know
What we do not what to know
Except pain.
And this is how the gods declare their love.
Truth comes with pain.
Wisdom comes through suffering.
Trouble, with its memories of pain,
Drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
So men against their will
Learn to practice moderation.
Favours come to us from gods.
Respect the altar of Justice and do not, looking to profit, dishonor it by spurning with godless foot; for punishment will come upon you.
Neither a life of anarchy nor a life under a despot should you praise. To all that lies in the middle has a god given excellence.
I pray for no more youth To perish before its prime; That Revenge and iron-heated War May fade with all that has gone before Into the night of time.
Yes, he had the heart to sacrifice his daughter, to bless the war that avenge the loss of a woman.
Old men, what are they? Fast fading the leaf, Three-footed they walk, yet frail as a child, As a dream set afloat in the daylight.
For in pure maidens, knowing not the marriage-bed, the glance of the eyes sinks from shame.
May dawn, as the proverb goes, bring happy tidings coming from her mother night.
But I must bear my destiny as best I can, knowing well that there is no resisting the strength of necessity.
Shameless self-willed infatuation
Emboldens men to dare damnation,
And starts the wheels of doom which roll
Relentless to their piteous goal.
Even so is the Libyan fable famed abroad: the eagle, pierced by the bow-sped shaft, looked at the feathered device, and said, Thus, not by others, but by means of our own plumage, are we slain.
The moving light, rejoicing in its strength, Sped from the pyre of pine, and urged its way, In golden glory, like some strange new sun.
The so-called mother of the child isn't the child's begetter, but only a sort of nursing soil for the new-sown seed. The man, the one on top, is the true parent, while she, a stranger, foster's a stranger's sprout.
Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers.
Out of respect, a man must veil his words when talking with a woman, but with a man he can frankly say whatever's on his mind.
The gods at will can shape a gladder strain, and from the lamentations at the graveside, a song of triumph may arise.
On me the tempest falls. It does not make me tremble. O holy Mother Earth, O air and sun, behold me. I am wronged.
Watchful are the Gods of all Hands with slaughter stained. The black Furies wait, and when a man Has grown by luck, not justice, great, With sudden overturn of chance They wear him to a shade, and, cast Down to perdition, who shall save him?
It is like a woman indeed
To take rapture before the fact is shown for true.
They believe too easily, are too quick to shift
From ground to ground; and swift indeed
The rumor voiced by a woman dies again.
So in the Libyan fable it is told That once an eagle, stricken with a dart, Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft: With our own feathers, not by others' hands, Are we now smitten.
For this our task hath Fate spun without fail to last for ever sure, that we on man weighed down with deeds of hate should follow till the earth his life immure. Nor when he dies can he boast of being truly free.
Nought is there in wealth That serves as bulwark 'gainst the subtle stealth Of Destiny and Doom.
When the black and mortal blood of man has fallen to the ground ... who then can sing spells to call it back again?
Obstinacy standing alone is the weakest of all things in one whose mind is not possessed by wisdom.
For Hades is mighty in calling men to account below the earth, and with a mind that records in tablets he surveys all things.
If a man should wanton walk with crime ... he shall find in death no great deliverance.
The tongue of slander is too prompt with wanton malice to wound the stranger.
Alas, poor men, their destiny. When all goes well a shadow will overthrow it. If it be unkind one stroke of a wet sponge wipes all the picture out.
The act of evil breeds others to follow, young sins in its own likeness.
Justice, voiceless, unseen, seeth thee when thou sleepest and when thou goest forth and when thou liest down. Continually doth she attend thee, now aslant thy course, now at a later time. These lines are from a section of doubtful or spurious fragments.
The air is Zeus, Zeus earth, and Zeus the heaven, Zeus all that is, and what transcends them all.
Zeus, first cause, prime mover; for what thing without Zeus is done among mortals?
In visions of the night, like dropping rain,
Descend the many memories of pain.
Reverence for parents stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.
Ye waves That o'er th' interminable ocean wreathe Your crisped smiles.
But you cannot speak of any glory for happenings that are at once evil and held in dishonor.
Commander against commander, brother against brother, enemy against enemy, I will take my stand. Quick, bring my greaves to protect against spears and stones!
They came back
To widows,
To fatherless children,
To screams, to sobbing.
The men came back
As little clay jars
Full of sharp cinders.
For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life.
Be it mine to draw from wisdom's fount, pure as it flows, that calm of soul which virtue only knows.
O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray, To come to me: of cureless ills thou art The one physician. Pain lays not its touch Upon a corpse.
Quotes by Aeschylus are featured in:
Inspirational Quotes
Justice Quotes
Motivational Quotes
Silence Quotes
Time Quotes
Words Of Wisdom Quotes
Wisdom Quotes